"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Posted on | January 2, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘They Took a Wild Chance’

Smitty has already commented on Willard’s embarrassing anti-Trump column, so I’ll refrain from further comment on that. What seems to have eluded the comprehension of Sen.-elect Romney and other #NeverTrump Republicans — looking at you, Jonah Goldberg — is that their insulting disdain for our President is rooted in their elitist loathing of the people who voted for him. That is to say, Mitt and Jonah aren’t just against Trump, personally, but they are against the 62.9 million Americans who elected him. Considering themselves to possess the authority of Platonic archons, our elite deny that the people are capable of self-government, and thus oppose their right to choose their own rulers.

Trump won because he got more votes in key states — including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan — than Hillary Clinton. Also, quite relevantly, Trump got more votes in 2016 than did the Republican presidential candidate in 2012. Compare the outcomes:

In these three Northern industrial states, the GOP vote increased by a combined total of 734,084 votes. However you explain this result, you cannot deny the fact that Trump got more votes and he did so despite the furious attacks of the liberal media establishment, and despite the vocal opposition of the #NeverTrump Republican elite. How much better would Trump’s re-election prospects be if his GOP critics would stop whining and start helping? Their endless petty complaints, their childish butthurt tantrums, are giving aid and comfort to the Democrats, and perhaps deliberately so. And it never seems to occur to the #NeverTrump crowd to wonder what was in the minds of those voters who elected Trump. Who are these people, anyway? Karol Markowicz is a Republican who didn’t vote for Trump, but who isn’t #NeverTrump:

To understand what happened, I devoured reporting about Trump voters and sought to understand them.
I wasn’t some liberal, mind you. I had worked for years in Republican politics. Yet I hadn’t known any Trump primary voters. I didn’t know his fans, his base.
Reading their concerns was eye-opening. They weren’t stupid, and they weren’t hateful. Mainstream politicians had ignored them for so long that they took a wild chance on the reality-TV star from Queens.

(Hat-tip: Hogewash.) Quite simply, the political elite of both parties are out of touch with the American heartland, and Trump was able to appeal to voters who felt their interests had been neglected. The elite’s objection to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” nationalism is evidence that our political establishment cares more about their own prestige than they do about the American people. The elite are our enemies.